CHAPTER 15
The Aesir-Vanir War
Although the Norse Tradition was home to a large and rather diverse group of gods and other beings, two groups of gods, the Aesir and the Vanir, through their battle and subsequent armistice would change the landscape of the pantheon.
It all starts with a woman named Gullveig. Gullveig was a völva6 and a practitioner of seidr (also called seid or seiðr,) a type of sorcery which was primarily in practice before the Christianization of modern-day Scandinavia. Seidr, while having many facets (most infamously a type of sex-magic,) was largely concerned with the divination and subsequent alteration of destiny.
The story begins with Gullveig making her way from place to place, world to world, plying her trade for the benefit (and gold) of various groups and individuals. When she7 reached Asgard, home of the Aesirs, she was an instant hit with the gods.
What happened next is fairly consistent throughout different sources, but the reasoning behind it is unclear; although there are a few theories.
In one version of the tale, the Aesirian gods, Odin in particular, are angered by the seeress’s admonitions regarding the power structure chosen by the Aesirs. Gullveig, being favored by the Vanirs, was to the Aesirs, a representative of those gods.
In a similar version, the main cause of conflict was that the Aesirs had become (or had simply always been) the sole recipients of the tributes paid the gods by mankind, and it was the advice of the seeress that they, the Aesirs, either pay tribute to the Vanirs, or allow a portion of the tribute to go to the same.
In yet another version, the seeress is actually the goddess Freya, who, being a practitioner and goddess of seidr, herself, had so impressed the court of the Aesirs that the latter found themselves disgusted with their own greed and willingness to subvert their laws and loyalties. They blamed the seeress for their own lust for the power which they desired for its potential to empower them. While this particular version may explain the connection between the Vanirs and the seeress, it’s not consistent with the Eddas.
Whatever the reason was, Odin shot his spear forth, striking, but not killing or inflicting permanent injury upon the woman. In their fury, the Aesirian gods stabbed the woman with their spears and burnt her alive not once, not twice, but three times. Each time, Gullveig would resurrect from the ashes. This did not make the Aesirians happy.
When they couldn’t kill the seeress, tensions began to build between the two groups of gods. At first, the Vanirs and the Aesirs tried to work out a diplomatic solution, but this ended in an impasse. The war itself isn’t explained in much detail, although, commonly, it’s stated that neither group could win definitive victory against the other. While the Aesirs fought by more conventional means, the Vanirs used sorcery and subterfuge as their method of attack.
It finally became apparent that neither group was likely to ever triumph over the other. So, they came together to forge a truce. It is with the truce and that which followed it that the Eddas were concerned.
The Prose Edda explains that, as a traditional show of unity and peace between the Aesirs and Vanirs, the two groups met and took turns spitting into a cauldron or vat. One of the things about the substances (even something as seemingly insignificant as saliva) of gods is that they’re never mundane.
Rather than simply dumping out the vat and possibly offending one another, they decided to put the swishing fluid to good use. Therefore, from their intermingling saliva, they created a man named Kvasir.
Kvasir and the Mead of Poetry
Now, being created from god-spit may not sound like the most promising of beginnings, but Kvasir was considered as quite possibly the wisest being (certainly the wisest human) in creation. It was written that there was no question for which he couldn’t provide an insightful, practical answer.
The Aesirs and Vanirs had learned their lesson about trying to take from or overthrow one another, and so Kvasir was allowed to roam freely. He travelled throughout Midgard, spreading knowledge and wisdom to all that he met.
One day, he came across two dwarves: Fjalar and Galar. These dwarves were, unbeknownst to the Kvasir, quite the murderous, anti-intellectual beings. They quickly killed Kvasir and collected his blood. As he was so endowed with wisdom, this virtue remained within his vital fluid. The two boiled it in the magic cauldron Odhrorir, and mixed it with honey (alternately, they enlist the giant Suttungr to add the nectar to the blood.) When approached about the fate of Kvasir, the dwarves said that he had choked (or suffocated) on his own intelligence. For two beings that harbored such distaste for intelligence and knowledge, the reply was really quite clever.
The mixture of blood and honey became “The Mead of Poetry.” Any who would drink of the fluid would gain the knowledge and understanding to become a poet or a scholar. This was safe enough in the hands of the dwarves, as, due to their anti-intellectualism, they didn’t have the desire to partake of it. However, it would be their lust for killing that would take the Mead of Poetry from their hands.
When the two decided that killing the wisest man hadn’t properly slaked their bloodlust, they went before the giant Gilling and offered to take him for a ride on their boat. (It must have been a rather large vessel.) Once at sea, the murderous pair capsized the boat and watched as Gilling drowned in the depths of the ocean.
As an act of anything but contrition, the two returned to the home of Gilling and informed his wife of her husband’s death. While Fjalar offered to take Gilling’s wife to visit the spot of her husband’s death (no doubt to dump her in the same spot,) Galar was growing weary of the wife’s sobbing. The second voyage was scrapped and the dwarves simply dispatched Gilling’s wife as she passed through the doorway of her home by dropping a millstone on her head.
The two psychotic dwarves rejoiced, but their mirth would be short-lived. For when Suttungr (a son of the murdered couple. Although not necessarily relevant to the rest of the story, he was rather drunk at the time. Alcohol and the ensuing drunkenness thereof was a fairly common occurrence in the stories of Norse Mythology) found out, he tracked the pair down and snatched them. He took them to a reef at low tide, with the full intention of letting the two drown in the very waters in which his father had.
The two dwarves, seeing Hel in their immediate future, quickly offered the jötunn the Mead of Poetry in exchange for their lives. Suttungr took the mead back to his home, the mountain Hnitbjörg, and placed it under the watchful eye of his daughter, Gunnlöd.
Odin
While there will be a great deal more about Odin throughout this book, as he was the chief deity of the Aesirs, he does play yet another role in the story of the Mead of Poetry.
Odin, along with being the chief deity of the Aesirs, was also a god of knowledge, royalty, berserker fury, battle, death, the arts (specifically language: the runic alphabet and poetry,) healing and sorcery—although other attributions do exist, varying a bit from source to source. His wife was the goddess Frigg, with whom he bore Baldur (also Balder, Baldr,) Hod and Hermud; with Jord: Thor; with Rind: Váli (alternately, Valie); with the jötunn, Grid: Vidar (who would slay Fenrir the wolf, more on that later.) Odin had an eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, which was the fastest creature extant, and was capable of travelling between the nine worlds with ease.
Now, Odin was tireless when it came to the search for further knowledge and wisdom. When he became aware of the Mead of Poetry and its location within Hnitbjörg, he set out to claim it for his own. In order to do this, he employed quite the clever (if rather brutal) deception.
He began by traveling to the home of Baugi, the younger brother of Suttungr, disguised as a common farmer. Upon his arrival, he found nine farmhands tending to the fields. The god offered to sharpen the farmhands’ scythes for them, and the workers agreed.
Being the chief deity of, well, pretty much everything, he was able to sharpen the farmers’ scythes with such deft effectiveness that the men implored him to sell them the whetstone he had used. Odin agreed, but rather than simple trade or barter, the god tossed the whetstone into the air and, before it fell to the ground, the workers killed one another with the very scythes the deity had just sharpened.
Upon making his way to the house of Baugi, he was offered shelter for the night. While there, the jötunn shared his frustration at the mutual killing of his workers. Odin, not quite magnanimously, offered to work the fields in the farmhands’ stead… for a price. The price was a sip of the mead which Baugi’s brother had come to possess. The jötunn hesitantly agreed, and Odin—by this point, calling himself Bölverkr so as to not expose his true identity—set to work.
Odin worked through the summer and the fall. When winter finally came, Odin asked about his payment. He and Baugi went to Hnitbjörg to convince Suttungr to allow the gracious farmhand to wet his lips with the Mead of Poetry.
Baugi should have checked with his brother before offering some of the mead as payment, though, as Suttungr refused. Odin, being quite the persuasive type, convinced Baugi to help him reach the mead through other means, namely, by boring through the mountain and into the dwelling of Gunnlöd, the guardian of the mead.
Odin gave the jötunn a drill with which to bore through the mountain. Baugi initially tried to deceive him by only drilling partway through, but Odin discovered the ruse by blowing into the hole, causing the dust and debris to come out the top of the hole. Once the god had convinced the jötunn to fulfill his end of the bargain, he repeated his test, this time, satisfied that Baugi had, indeed followed through.
Odin changed his form into that of a snake and slithered his way through the hole. Although Baugi promptly tried to stab him with the auger, the Aesir made it through unscathed.
Once inside, Odin morphed into the figure of a young, attractive man and set to work making an arrangement with Gunnlöd. The arrangement was that if she would give him three sips of the mead, Odin would share Gunnlöd’s bed for three consecutive nights. Being that Odin had turned himself into quite the handsome rogue, Gunnlöd agreed.
After three nights with Gunnlöd, Odin persisted regarding the mead. Gunnlöd took him to the chamber where the mead was stored. The draught was contained within three vessels. Odin took a drink from each, but rather than a sip, he consumed the entirety of the Mead of Poetry.
Not being one to stick around and gloat, Odin transformed himself into an eagle and flew off in the direction of Asgard. Suttungr quickly came to discover what had happened and gave chase, turning himself into an eagle. Odin would prove too fast for him, though. As the god approached Asgard, the other Aesirs saw the chase and set vats of their own along the border of the realm.
Odin quickly regurgitated the mead into the vessels, but the closing proximity of the giant forced the god to be a bit hasty. A few drops of the Mead of Poetry fell from his mouth (or, in this case, beak,) and landed in Midgard, the realm of humanity.
Suttungr retreated, as he was outnumbered. The drops which fell to Midgard were available for the consumption of any, but lacked sufficient quantity to do its full work. It’s from these drops, the Norse believed, that those mediocre in poetry and/or scholarship gained their lackluster “inspiration.” The rest of the Mead of Poetry, however, was doled out by Odin himself, empowering his fellow gods along with his favored poets and scholars to untold heights of genius.
Thus, what started as the first war in Norse Tradition eventually gave rise to new apexes of poetic and scholarly work. I can’t help but wonder if Odin gave some of this draught to the authors of the Eddas.